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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

One dead child after another and
then their mother. How could Cicero stand any more? He only had
three of his nine children left and was constantly worried they would be gone
too. His worry wasn't over with the three that were still living.

LOVE AND LAMENT was the saga of Mary
Bet Hartsoe and was set in the late 1800's when typhoid was rampant, when
deaths were on a daily basis, and when inventions of machinery were beginning
to surface to make factories and lives easier. The late
1800's was a time of change for everyone both personally and
historically. The book dealt with many social issues and is very deep, thoughtful
and intellectual.

LOVE AND LAMENT was beautifully
written. The author had amazing prose and detailed, remarkable
descriptions. At times the descriptions were so vivid, you could feel the
grass under your feet, smell the aromas in the air, and share the pain of the
characters.Despite the marvelous writing, it was a bit tedious and
difficult to get into at first, but once I became attached to the main
character, Mary Bet, it held my interest.

Mary Bet was the youngest of
the nine children, the one who stayed with her father, and the one who was
quite headstrong for a woman of that era. It was amusing to see the
social protocol of that time especially the "rules" for courting and
the woman's role in following these "rules."

It was a book about family,
suffering, and living life no matter what circumstances are thrown your
way. If you enjoy historical fiction, description at its finest,
but details a bit too drawn out at times, you will enjoy LOVE AND LAMENT. 4/5

This book was given to me free of
charge and without compensation by the publisher in exchange for an honest
review.

A simple letter, but was it really
that simple? A letter written long ago. A letter indicating it was not allowed to
be opened. A letter that made John Paul’s
wife, Cecelia, quite curious.

What harm would be done by opening the letter? Cecelia was dying to open it, but the message John-Paul wrote on the front of the envelope said it could not be opened until
his death. When Cecilia asked her husband about it, he said he
had been sentimental when he wrote it, and that she should just put it away.
Obediently Cecilia, the good wife, put it away without opening it.

Hints about the contents of the letter will peak your curiosity as it did Cecelia’s. When
she did open the letter and found out what John-Paul had written, she couldn't
believe it. How could this be true? Cecelia the perfect wife and fixer of
everything couldn't fix this.

Cecelia was the perfect wife,
mother, and town citizen. She knew everyone in town, and she knew
everything about the city residents. She
remembered Tess when she came back to her childhood town because her husband
didn't love her any more. Rachel was also part of Cecelia's circle. Rachel had
a few heartbreaking situations in the past. But…what Cecelia found in
that letter was going to be more than a heartbreak for Rachel.

THE HUSBAND'S SECRET was focused on
this letter, Tess, Rachel and Cecilia. The letter’s secret had to do with
an unknown connection between Tess, Cecelia, and Rachel and something that
happened in the past that linked them together and something in the present that caused more heartache and pain.

When the book begins, you will think
it is going to be a book about a husband’s affair, but it is more sinister than
that. It actually is a tragic secret.

THE HUSBAND’S SECRET is about more than keeping secrets, though.
It deals with a parent’s love for his/her child and about the lengths parents go to
in order to protect their children. It deals with right and wrong, and it deals
with the thought - do we really know our spouse or significant other?

Don’t be mislead into thinking it is
simply a book about secrets between a husband and his wife. It is far more
than that. It is a book about secrets whether they are large or small and
about our decisions to reveal the secret or to not reveal the secret.

THE HUSBAND’S SECRET is an excellent
read that will keep you pondering life, pondering the decisions we make, and thinking
about the secrets most of us have.What
is your secret? 5/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher and LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

It is my pleasure to feature Steven Gore today as he talks about his newest thriller.

ABOUT STEVEN GORE:

Gore is a former private investigator whose international thrillers draw
on his investigations of murder, fraud, money laundering, organized
crime, political corruption, and drug,
sex, and arms trafficking in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The
author of Act of Deceit and
Power Blind, Gore has been featured on 60 Minutes for his
work and has been honored for excellence in his field. He is trained in
forensic science and has lectured to professional organizations on a
wide range of legal and criminal subjects.
***************************************************STEVEN GORE'S LATEST THRILLER:His
latest thriller, A CRIMINAL DEFENSE, is his second book in his thrilling series featuring ex-SFPD detective, Harlan Donnally.

“Rich,
gritty, and terrifically twisty…crackles with legal and psychological
authenticity.”

—Lou
Berney, author of Whiplash River

***************************************************

In Steven Gore’s page-turning
second installment, A CRIMINAL DEFENSE
by Steven Gore (Harper Mass Market; July 30, 2013; $9.99; ISBN:
9780062025074), readers find ex-SFPD detective Harlan Donnally
running a small cafe north of San Francisco. But when Mark Hamlin, a criminal defense
lawyer with a slimy reputation, is found murdered underneath the Golden Gate
Bridge, Donnally is drawn back into a twisted and corrupt world he thought he’d
left behind.

Over three decades, Hamlin's
practice devolved into just another racket: intimidating witnesses, suborning
perjury, destroying evidence, laundering money. But is he the victim of
murder—or of a dangerous sexual encounter gone wrong? And when law enforcement
believes justice has already been done, who can be trusted to find out?

Despite a mysterious request left
in the dead man’s hand, Donnally had resolved it wouldn't be him. He had no
desire to immerse himself in the deceit that was Hamlin's career . . . nor
entangle himself in the corrupted loyalties that turned the dead lawyer's
associates into both co-conspirators and suspects . . . nor make himself the
proxy for the hatreds and betrayals Hamlin left behind.

But the presiding judge demanded
otherwise—and that might cost Donnally his life.

***************************************************A FEW COMMENTS FROM STEVEN GORE:

Counterintuitive.

If there is
single word that characterizes my encounter with writing crime fiction after
decades as a criminal investigator, it’s counterintuitive.

And it’s part of
the explanation why true crime makes for lousy crime fiction, why so few
career-long law enforcement officers and private investigators succeed in crime
writing and why most of those who do have only worked in the field briefly. In
truth, much of what readers want from investigator protagonists are
characteristics and habits that experienced investigators have to train out of
themselves and train out of young investigators in order for them to succeed.

Readers want
different things from investigators than do law enforcement agencies and private
investigator clients. Readers want to feel increasing tension, while, with the
rarest of exceptions, experienced investigators aim to lower it; readers want to
watch investigators overcome obstacles, while experienced investigators aim to
avoid them; readers want to read about characters who are uniquely qualified, while
in the real world there are only investigators who are especially qualified; readers
want to watch investigators run up against walls and then force their way through
them, while experienced investigators aim how to slip around them; readers want
spontaneity and surprise, while experienced investigators plan and plan in
order to limit surprises; readers want to see investigators try and try again, while
clients want real investigators to get it right the first time; readers are not
troubled by brash, aggressive protagonists injecting conflict into a scene, while
real investigators don’t inject it, they anticipate potential conflict inherent
in a situation and work to mute it.

In the end, in
the real world, doing all these things in these ways is both the criteria of
competence and the conditions for successful investigations.

There is one kind
of law enforcement that matches readers’ expectations: narcotics. But it isn’t
at heart a crime solving assignment. Narcotics cases are generally built from
leaning on people who’ve already been caught dirty—by patrol officers and
street drug task forces and through search warrants and wiretaps--to give up
those above them. It’s less about solving crimes and more about discovering
crimes already in progress or creating crimes by means of informants or
undercover agents. The problem is that since the skills and attitudes that
succeed in narcotics enforcement fail in investigations, few narcotics officers
become first rate homicide detectives. Observe the contrast between the drug
enforcement reality shows and A&E’s TheFirst 48. In TheFirst 48, at least during
the first few years of the show and before detectives began to play to the
camera, nearly all of the excitement came from the music and the jump cuts. The
detectives themselves were generally low key and methodical.

The problem for
me was to translate the reality of investigation into fiction. That is to say,
there could be no “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in
his hand” of Raymond Chandler or “My way of learning is to heave a wild and
unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery” of Dashiell Hammett. Rather,
plots had to be driven internally and conflict had to be exploited from within,
rather than imposed from without and the methods used had to be those that
succeeded in real life.

On the domestic
front, I’m making this effort in the Harlan Donnally novels of which A Criminal Defense is the latest, and on
the international front, in the Graham Gage thrillers of which Power Blind is the latest. In each
series, the central problem I faced was investigative competence: the
protagonists had to apply real world methods and approaches in a realistic way.
That meant applying the techniques of genre fiction to stories whose aim is
realism. And the challenge was to make the stories not only informative about
the real world of crime and investigation, but exciting for readers. In the
end, it’s the readers who will judge whether I have truly bridged the gap
between the real and the fictional.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Rome, corruption, Catholic cardinals fathering children, and
of course murder all thrown into THE SERPENT AND THE PEARL.

THE SERPENT AND THE PEARL was set in
Rome where the powerful Borgia family was in charge. You didn't want to go against the Borgia family. The Borgia family ruled
during the 1400's and had servants, money and power, but they mostly had corrupt
family members. The corruption began in the book when Orsino and Giulia were
married but Orsino never came to the marriage bed. He had been paid off by the Cardinal.
Guilia found out that Cardinal Borgia wanted her for himself, and that he
already had many children from previous women. Cardinal Borgia would hide his indiscretions by paying off and sending away the groom and then keeping the bride for himself.

The book was based on fact and was
filled with corrupt, evil characters with chapters devoted to each
character. Guilia Farnese was the main character along with Carmelina,
Cardinal Borgia, and Madonna Adriana. Cardinal
Borgia and Madonna Adriana, Guilia's mother-in-law, were the most evil of all
in my opinion. The characters and the book itself were interesting, but it took
a while to get the gist of what was going on. It
was difficult to follow and seemed to be a tale focused on the Cardinal and
Guilia’s lovemaking. It is unbelievable this really occurred back in
the 1400's.

I liked Leonello, the dwarf and
bodyguard, the best. Even though he murdered people, he seemed to be the most
likeable of the characters. I also liked
Carmelina, the chef. She was believable
and a hard worker. I completely disliked
Cardinal Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI) simply because he was evil, cunning, and selfish. Guilia
was likeable, but also a bit naive.

I can't say I didn't like THE
SERPENT AND THE PEARL, but I can't say that I did. I do like history and I definitely learned a great
deal, but the book seemed to drag. I
wasn't "dying" to get back to the book. Perhaps since I didn't read Ms. Quinn's other
books, I missed out on something.

The
reader can’t deny, though, that the writing was excellent, very descriptive,
and well researched. Ms. Quinn
definitely did thorough research. The
historical facts were detailed and accurate.
In some respects, this era was a bit comical, and it was difficult to believe that
these activities with the Cardinals/Popes took place.

Not sure what my rating should be,
but I am going to go with 3.5 out of 5 simply because it was a bit tedious with
the day-to-day living being repeated.
Other than that, if you are a fan of this era, you will not be
disappointed. History was masterfully brought
to life through Ms. Quinn’s talents.

This book was given to me free of
charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest
review.

Monday, July 22, 2013

While
the cat was away, the "mouse" was playing. Louisa Conan Doyle,
the wife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had an accident in their NY hotel and
wasn't able to go with Arthur on his American book tour. She took advantage of
being a woman of the 1800’s without her husband. She was getting to play detective, and it wasn't a murder in one of her husband's books.

Before
Arthur left, though, he warned his wife about getting involved in this murder investigation and also about the social implications of her going out
alone, but Louisa wasn't one to listen to her husband when she had something on
her mind that she "HAD" to do. Louisa knew she saw a murder victim walking out of their hotel the
first day they arrived, and she wanted to make sure the
police knew she had information.

Despite
Louisa's being told to stay out of this investigation by her husband as well as the
authorities, she pursued it. She said she must let everyone
know what she knew and that she could help them find out where the murder
took place, who was involved, and who the murderer was.

Was it pure luck that she had fallen down in the hotel and was not able to go on
the tour with her husband? She thought it had been luck because now she would be able
to help solve the murder, but the New York Police Department wasn't feeling lucky.

Louisa wanted justice served and just couldn't
understand how New Yorkers and Americans could take murders and
disappearances so lightly. She took on the Police Department as well as the
hotel manager and the hotel detective to set them straight. Louisa was
a great character and a character very much ignoring the rules set for a proper
English lady or any lady in the 1800's. I laughed at her antics and her
bravery. She just wouldn't give up.

The other characters included policemen, hotel guests, and the hotel owners. The book was right on for the time period
and its social protocol both in and out of the police station.

I thoroughly enjoyed WINTER AT DEATH'S HOTEL. I enjoyed the characters, the detailed descriptions, and
definitely the humor and the storyline. The ending had the murder solved,
but it was a comedy of errors.

WINTER AT DEATH'S HOTEL is an enjoyable, change-of-pace mystery with a marvelous, entertaining, and determined main character. 5/5

This book was given to me free of
charge without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

Monday, July 15, 2013

California, Mexico, a lemon orchard, an estate owner, and a
special Mexican worker in the lemon orchard.

Roberto, a worker in
the lemon orchard, and Julia, the niece of the owner of the lemon orchard had
one thing in common, and they were drawn to each other.

Julia
and Roberto had both lost children, one in an accident and one in the
desert. Both of their lives were consumed with the grief of their loss even
after five years, and they shared this common bond.

THE
LEMON ORCHARD was a beautiful story about the cruelty as well as the beauty our
lives hold for us. You will become a
part of the lives of Julia and Roberto in this splendidly told tale of what it
means to truly love and to truly lose something or someone you love.

Ms.
Rice’s descriptions of the California and Mexico landscapes was amazing. I could easily visualize the lemon orchard, the
estate's house and grounds, and the raging forest fire as well as the desert and the path Roberto had to follow to cross the
border from Mexico into the United States.

The
characters were well developed and believable.
The authenticity and reality of the border control operation and the suffering
of the Mexicans crossing the border definitely had been well researched.

This
is the first book I have read by Ms. Rice, and I was very pleased with her writing as
well as the storyline. The story flowed
nicely, kept your interest, and the ending pages had me turning as fast as I
could to see how things would turn out.
The book will pull you right in as you soak up the beauty of the
Malibu countryside as well as the lives of the characters.

Marvelously
written and researched, I hope you are able to read this book. It took a few pages to see where the book was
headed, but THE LEMON ORCHARD is well worth the wait. ENJOY!!
5/5

This
book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher
in return for an honest review.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Sassy was born out of wedlock
on the riverbank of Sweetwater River. Her mother used Sassy as her first
name just because, and she used Sweetwater for her last name because she didn't
want Sassy to know who her father was. Right after her birth Sassy and
her mother, Vi, left the area and stayed away for thirteen years until Vi
decided to return to her childhood home.
After thirteen years, coming back home was quite difficult for Sassy because she
knew no one and was never told she even had any family. It was wonderful for Vi, though. Once
Sassy saw the family home, she had no desire to live in this huge house and
especially with Grandma Edna, but that is what her Mama wanted. Sassy found out
very quickly more than she wanted to about her "kin" and about family
secrets.
The Story of Sassy Sweetwater was a perfect portrayal of a Southern family. I loved the descriptions Ms. Cook used to
describe the beautiful home Sassy's mama grew up in, the landscape, and
especially the characters. The Southern mansion and its surroundings
sounded fabulous. Despite the beauty of the home and landscape, though,
the McLaughlin family was definitely made up of an odd bunch of characters.
This book has adult situations and is set during the time of segregation. The
Story of Sassy Sweetwater is an easy read that flows nicely despite the book
always seeming to have a sinister, gloomy undertone that included murders along
with everything else strange and dysfunctional.
It was an unusual book, not what I normally read but it was so different that I
continued.I loved the Southern charm
and life style. The ending did turn out well for Sassy....it made a full circle
from Sassy's poverty-stricken childhood to a rich, fulfilled Southern
woman with the reader sharing her pain as well as her happiness.

The
book will appeal to most readers but I would steer young readers away. There
was quite a bit of adult content. 4/5This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the author in return for an honest review.

**************************

...so nice to see you stopped by.
My blog began in 2010 simply because I wanted to give blogging a try and to have my own personal space to share my reviews. I loved visiting Portree, Scotland, and thought that would make a wonderful header because of the colors. It has since become my trademark. I also love polka dots and think it makes my blog, the header, and my personality come together.
My blog's goal is to introduce you to historical fiction and mystery titles and to promote the overall love of reading to everyone of all ages.
Please stop back as often as you like to see what reviews I have added to the BLOG ARCHIVE and for bookish fun and giveaways.
I hope to see you often.
ELIZABETH

In my delight with your review, I forgot to say you wrote a hell of a good review.Concise but hitting all the points and making it sound interesting to a reader.I'm surprised you haven't taken up the pen yourself!

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Ahhhhh...Scotland - July, 2010

.................Back in Scotland again this summer visiting my son...a lot of new things to see...old houses from the 1600's and quaint settings. We also went to London to see LOVE NEVER DIES...it is Andrew Lloyd Weber's sequel to THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Went to the Isle of Skye...what beautiful green hills, waterfalls, sheep, mountains...just fantastic. Stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in this most adorable, remote town called Portree...check it out...the photo at the top half of my blog actually is Portree, Scotland...love Portree. Went to York, England also...very quaint as well. The only thing I didn't like was the weather...definitely not summer weather to me...I need HOT temperatures. :) Also heard the Rod Stewart concert while standing on the Royal Mile....he was at the Edinburgh Castle in a stadium-like outdoor stage and we could hear it from the street.....pretty awesome.